Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c10.126

c10.126

The fact that none of the verses of Harivallabha has been found quoted on any rāgiṇī pictures, would suggest that texts composed by other hands had already acquired popularity which could not be displaced by the higher literary merits of Harivallabha’s compositions. Dr. Coomaraswamy considers the Hindī texts quoted on the earliest rāgiṇī paintings mentioned above, as of the same date as the paintings themselves. “We know nothing of descriptive Rāgamālā poems older than those found on the paintings themselves, and these are apparently in a Bundelkhaṇḍi dialect which is related to the language of the Padumāvatī of Malik Muhammad Jaisī, which can hardly be older than the beginning of the sixteenth century.”¹ The careless and perfunctory style of the writing of these texts endorsed on the back of these early Rāgamālā pictures (designated as S. 1 and S. 2 in the Boston Museum, Catalogue Part V, p. 72) do not encourage the suggestion that the writings and, therefore, the texts are as old as the pictures. But certain significance attaches to the fact that the same couplets are quoted on Mr. A. Ghose’s Mālkousa Rāga (Plate XIV-B) as on the analogous example of the same rāga in the Boston Museum (see the two identical texts with minor variations quoted on Plate XIV). The identity of this dohā quoted on two examples of analogous illustrations of nearly the same date suggests that both these pictures were based on the same text, that is to say, the text existed before those miniatures were painted.